Gateway (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

Product Information

Robinette, like all of Pohl's adults, is terribly stupid and/or lazy. Einstein and Sigfrid do _all_ the thinking. Everyone seems to feel entitled without any reason. And, they are all pessimists and spend a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong and kill them.

The Heechee Saga is epic. "After more than three-quarters of a million years of rolling slowly around Earth;s very distant sun, the artifact pulled itself into a new orbit and surged away." (p 202) That may seem a bit too long-term to wrap yr head around but think of this: Mayflies have an average lifespan of 24 hrs & their lifespan can be as short as 30 minutes ( http://www.itsnature.org/what-on-eart... ), humans in the US have an average lifespan of 78.2 yrs. Interestingly, the US is 38 in the list of longest-lived & Japan's at the top w/ 82.6. The average expectancy independent of country is 67.2 (males 65, females 69.5). ( http://www.disabled-world.com/calcula... ) A century in the future, humans land on Venus and colonize it. Below the surface, thousands of miles of artificial tunnels are discovered. They are believed to have been built thousands of years ago by an alien species known as the Heechee, but little else is known about them until an explorer discovers a Heechee ship, intact and operational, in one of the tunnels. All of the adults care about one thing: Money 🤑🤑🤑 OK, sex is in there somewhere, but money is priority #1. One can have different opinions about capitalism, but when any possible question about a character's motivation can be answered with "Because ... MONEY!!!", things get boring. PAINFULLY BOOOOOOOORING! Frederik Pohl’s works had made a global tourist off him. He represented the USA in international conferences, both science and non-science. Together with his wife, Dr. Anne Hull, they pioneered most of the Science Fiction Associations and chaired some like the Science Fiction Research Association.Gateway was serialized in Galaxy prior to its hardcover publication. A short concluding chapter, cut before publication, was later published in the August 1977 issue of Galaxy. [6] Plot summary [ edit ] I wanted to kill Klara. I had been taming all that stored-up fury, and I hadn't even let myself know it was there until she pulled the trigger. I put my arms around her. "I can say that I love you, and I'm sorry, and I want to make it up to you, and I want to get married and live together and have kids and—" Congratulations to Britannica Contributor and 2010 Hugo Award Winner Frederik Pohl | Britannica Blog". Britannica.com. September 8, 2010 . Retrieved August 10, 2014. Exploration in one such planet brings a Heechee 'computer' which makes him rich; however, after being analyzed by the Gateway Corporation, it reveals that a hostile alien race, dubbed the Assassins threatens all advanced civilizations in the universe, and the Heechee managed to evade them. Leonard Worden, the deputy chief of the exploration program, informs the player that even after all those years, reactivation of the Heechee technology by humans would only make them detectable to the Assassins. However the same computer provides coordinates to an interplanetary shield device.

Gateway took this initial concept one step further by postulating an asteroid, overlooked because of its orbit outside the plane of the ecliptic, filled with Heechee tunnels and artifacts as well as hundreds of faster-than-light spaceships, equipped with landers, which could depart to random destinations. An international corporation is established to manage the exploration and whatever treasures are found, and human “prospectors” from Earth who can pay the price to travel to the Gateway are sent out to explore. Tales from the Planet Earth (1986), created with Elizabeth Anne Hull, a novel with nineteen authors The story begins when the hero of Gateway finances an expedition to a distant alien spaceship that may end famine forever. On the ship, the explorers find a human boy, and evidence that reveals a powerful alien civilization is thriving on a transport ship headed right for Earth…"

I reached out to touch her, and she sobbed and hit me, as hard as she could. The blow caught me on the shoulder. The old geezer Peter was a member of the Hitler youth when he was young. Because of course he was, he's German! I don't know how that is supposed to fit into the time line of Gateway ... but ... he was a Nazi ... and maybe still is? Gateway is an asteroid hollowed out by the Heechee, a long-vanished alien race. Humans have had limited success understanding the left-behind bits of Heechee technology found there and elsewhere. The Gateway Corporation administers the asteroid on behalf of the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, the New People's Asia, the Venusian Confederation, and the United States of Brazil. He also worked as an advertising copywriter and then as a copywriter and book editor for Popular Science. [10] Hatching the Phoenix", illustrated by Vincent DiFate, Amazing Stories, Fall 1999, pp.32–43, and Winter 2000, pp.84–96

Yet the story is absolutely gripping in its escalating intensity. As the narrative switches between the present and the past, the reader spirals closer and closer to the ugly truths that Bob cannot face, drawn inexorably to the tragedy at the heart of this tale. One. The quantities Tiny Jim referred to as 'gosh numbers'. These are numerical quantities, mostly of the sort called 'dimensionless' because they are the same in any units you measure. The mass ratio between the electron and the proton. The Dirac number to express the difference between electromagnetic and gravitational force. The Eddington fine-structure constant. And so forth. We know these numbers to great precision. What we do not know is why they are what they are. Why shouldn't the fine-structure constant be, say, 150 instead of 137-plus? If we understoood astrophysics—if we had a complete theory—we should be able to deduce these numbers from that theory.["]" - p 289 From the early 1960s until 1969, Pohl served as editor of Galaxy Science Fiction and Worlds of If magazines, taking over after the ailing H. L. Gold could no longer continue working "around the end of 1960". [28] Under his leadership, If won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine for 1966, 1967 and 1968. [29] Pohl hired Judy-Lynn del Rey as his assistant editor at Galaxy and If. He also served as editor of Worlds of Tomorrow from its first issue in 1963 until it was merged into If in 1967. [30] Pohl was a high-school dropout, but, by the time he was 20 years old, he was editing the science-fiction magazines Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories. In the late 1930s Pohl and others interested in science fiction formed a group known as the Futurians, which dedicated itself to the creation and promotion of constructive and forward-looking (“futurian”) science fiction. Other members included Isaac Asimov and C.M. Kornbluth. During World War II Pohl served in the U.S. Army Air Forces and then worked briefly in an advertising agency before returning to writing and editing.

Publication Order of The Year's Best Science Fiction Books

I'll take you out for a drink later. It's a custom. Only it's not very interesting until about twenty-two hundred. The Blue Hell'll be full of people then, and I'll introduce you around. See what you can find. What are you, straight, gay, what?" For example English pyre and fire are doublets. Modern words with similar meaning but subtle differences contribute to the richness of the English language, as exemplified by the doublets frail and fragile (both from the Latin adjective fragilis): one might refer to a fragile tea cup and a frail old woman, but never frail tea cup, whilst fragile old woman adds a dimension of meaning by implying emotional infirmity rather than physical." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublet... This was a good sci-fi story. The Heechee Saga is definitely one of the better sci-fi series I've read over the years. It has the right balance between the characters and the harder sci-fi aspects of the story. I hated myself for it. I mean, not hated, exactly. More like despised. Poor goddamn son of a bitch, me, all kinky and awful, beating his meat and thinking about being screwed by his girl's lover." Pohl was the son of Frederik (originally Friedrich) George Pohl (a salesman of German descent) and Anna Jane Mason. [8] Pohl Sr. held various jobs, and the Pohls lived in such far-flung locations as Texas, California, New Mexico, and the Panama Canal Zone. The family settled in Brooklyn when Pohl was around seven. [9]

Elegy for a Dead Planet: Luna", 1937, (writing as Elton Andrews) [a poem, his first published piece] In his 1969 novel, " The Age of the Pussyfoot", Pohl speculated about a society where everyone could access knowledge and the means to communicate with others through a small handheld device similar to a smartphone. Although he set the novel 500 years in the future, he noted in an afterword that it might be as few as fifty years away. A short story " Day Million" suggested that society in the year 2737 might be as alien to us as contemporary society would be to someone from ancient times. The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle (né The Wizards of Pung's Corners)", original story 1958, retranslation 1984. Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna (The Poetry Corner)". Thewaythefutureblogs.com. January 30, 2009 . Retrieved September 8, 2012.No, no," he shrilled crossly, taking it away from her and marching crossly into the chamber. "You do not pray with them. You read them. Like this."" - p 138 The game's climax occurs on a world of the Assassins, dubbed "Watchtower" where the player is sent to activate the mechanism. There he will meet a Heechee artificial intelligence entity and also an electronic Assassin entity which will trap the player in a VR environment. Following the Heechee AI's guidance, the player is tasked to escape them by creating paradoxes and afterwards upload the Heechee AI. Amit nagyon hiányoltam belőle, az az első rész Átjáró-hangulata. Néha ebből fel-felvillant valamit a szerző, főleg akkor, amikor a szereplők egy ismeretlen hícsí objektumot derítenek fel, de gyorsan el is múlik. Kár, mert az első résznek is ez adta a meg a sajátos ízét. By the time of his death, he was working to finish a second volume of his autobiography The Way the Future Was (1979), along with an expanded version of the latter. [42] Frederik Pohl (1919-2013) was a prolific and profoundly influential American science fiction author, who also helped to shape the genre as a fan writer, academic, non-fiction writer, editor, and literary agent. He was a member of the seminal science fiction fan club the Futurians. He served as a weatherman in the Army Air Corps during World War II.